I've been playing for quite a while now , since the late 90's/early 2000. Just mentioned that so you have a point of reference as to my experience.

My daughter just turned 9 , and she occasionally comes with me to the golf course , sometimes she plays, sometimes she just tags along. This year I found a 144g DX Shark, and she has been using it with fair success. However, I Just picked up a 146g DX Aero for her as a Christmas gift. My thought was that the Aero is neutral/very slightly understable, has little to no fade ,and it has tons of glide . I thought this would be a good disc for her to establish her form and learn the ins and outs of Hyzer/Anhyzer etc without having the disc influence her form too much. The speed 3 and big glide of 6 should hopefully work well for her and allow her to get reasonable distance from her lil arm.

She isn't a little kid, she's pretty good sized (about 51" and 80lbs) but she is still just a 9 yr old girl, so I thought a lower speed disc with good glide would encourage her to play if she sees she is able to get some good distance on it.

Any other discs you guys/gals could recommend ? Does my train of thought make sense to you ?

This is a pretty good strategy in my opinion. It's best to start off with slower and stable discs to get the fundamentals down. I'm buying my buddy an ion and a champ leopard for xmas because those discs can pretty much do it all, and they are both slow and stable.

I don't recall which Finn here was the proud father of a six year old girl that threw was it 40 (think so) or 60 meters. There is a girl of 13 or 14 here that threw 100+ kph into radar and throws 120 meters with two years of playing wth 25 aces. Another one at 13 throws 430'ish. Don't count young persons or girls out. If you want to see the farther throwing girl check out the first toss in both videos and note that she has played disc golf only a year placing 8th in FPO in Finnish champioships while being a national team swimmer at the same time taking away practice time from disc golf:

Form rules even at an early age. At such a young age body control is likely the limiting factor and hand/finger size. Wedge is the thinnest disc so it should be the easiest to grip for young persons. The Aero is so tall that it may be problematic. XD and Spike are the other thin options for thin discs that are not fast. Well they al are because they have so little friction vs their wind length. The Wedge is fast and middish so it may fade out early but it may help in control some pulling out of mistaken annies more likely than the very undertstable at speeds Spike. Which should be pretty straight for a six year old. What i would do is to have her try out a thin disc too and let her decide for herself. Kids are all about instant gratification so they can get frustrated quickly if the disc does not fly well which is why i recommend also giving her a thin putter.

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

Unzbuzzled wrote:This is a pretty good strategy in my opinion. It's best to start off with slower and stable discs to get the fundamentals down. I'm buying my buddy an ion and a champ leopard for xmas because those discs can pretty much do it all, and they are both slow and stable.

Glad you brought up the Champ Leopard, I have a DX leopard I use for anhyzer shots, it's pretty easy to do, it seems fairly unstable. Everything I've read and personal experience says that Champ plastic is considerably more stable than DX. Does the Champion Leopard seem considerably more stable than the DX ?

JR wrote:Form rules even at an early age. At such a young age body control is likely the limiting factor and hand/finger size. Wedge is the thinnest disc so it should be the easiest to grip for young persons. The Aero is so tall that it may be problematic. XD and Spike are the other thin options for thin discs that are not fast. Well they al are because they have so little friction vs their wind length. The Wedge is fast and middish so it may fade out early but it may help in control some pulling out of mistaken annies more likely than the very undertstable at speeds Spike. Which should be pretty straight for a six year old. What i would do is to have her try out a thin disc too and let her decide for herself. Kids are all about instant gratification so they can get frustrated quickly if the disc does not fly well which is why i recommend also giving her a thin putter.

I looked up the discs you listed. They are overall thinner (height from table top to top of flight plate) , but I couldn't find the rim depth for the Aero.

The discs you listed are all understable , in varying degrees. The Wedge being the thinnest and the most understable. I would prefer to have her learn with a disc that is not understable, or at least not as understable as the Wedge. The XD and the Spike look decent, but the Spike doesn't have any glide.

I was previously considering the Dart. Now you have me looking at the dimensions of the discs. It is shorter than the Aero overall, has a deeper rim than the XD , Wedge , or Spike , and has comparable overall height to the XD (taller overall than the Spike or Wedge ).

The Dart is fairly neutral , similar to the Aero. Both the Dart and the XD have speed 3 and glide 4. The XD has a narrow rim/wing width . Perhaps I'll get her a Dart or an XD too .

Overall disc height was never an issue for me, but rim/wing width sure is. Just for reference , I can "palm" a basketball in one hand , so I don't have small hands. I just can't seem to throw the high speed discs very well. One issue might be my lack of speed, but certainly one of the problems I have is the wide rimmed/winged discs feel very weird to me. A speed 9-10 disc is about as wide a rim that I can deal with. That's one of the reasons I recently bought a Sword, because it has a fairly narrow rim/wing.

Back to her now. The Aero and XD have a narrow rim/wing width , while the Dart is a bit wider. The Dart and Aero are more neutral than the XD , but the XD has the lowest overall height and rim width of these three.

Damn it ! You've got me thinking about this from every angle now !

Thanks for the ideas, I'm gonna think about it some more before I decide what to do.

Thanks for the suggestion !Looked up the Hawk. It is fairly unstable according to the flight chart, and it is a speed 4 , glide 5. That said , it is pretty short overall height (from table top to flight plate) , has a moderate rim width (like the Dart, or Wedge) , and couldn't find a rim depth for it.

I know that discs don't always fly like the flight charts suggest, but the Hawk seems as if it would be similar to a Cobra , which is what I learned with. Certainly not a bad disc , but not very neutral.

I think I'm leaning towards the Aero ( already bought it ) , the XD and the Dart.

She is certainly able to try any of the discs I own, but my intention was to try to teach her good form. I'm sure it would be easier for her to learn with an understable disc, but then it is very hard to transition to a stable disc.

Thanks guys, if you can think of any other discs or ideas for me/her I welcome them.

The Hawk has a sharp bottom. The Dart is tall too and i don't have alarge hand and cannot dream of palming a basket ball. Every lady that i've introduced to the thin putters has loved them for the feel and most have been full grown ones and one taller than me. I would not worry about the stability other than in the case of the Spike. I don't think that she can overpower any of those any time soon and at a likely power of a six year old they should not act that understable but rather straight or even early fading in the case of the Spike and the Wedge so from that perspective the XD probably has the best easy learning curve and the durability to allow it to stay straight for a long time. While starting out as a straight disc. The Wedge is understable when tossed to 250'+ or so and flippy at 340'. Seeing as i normally cannot get to 310' with putters other than once in a blue moon the Wedge is fast and long even though it takes a good pull to get it to 320' for me which is not too uncommon. Leos are faster and longer yet taller and the DX shares the same problem than the Wedge does. It breaks in quickly to well more understable. When new the DX Leo is not that much more understable than the Champ.

Sorry this IS the review site so looking at things from multiple angles is the norm

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

I just got the Aero today. The weight listed by Innova is 146g, but when I weighed it it is 148g. That seems pretty typical for Innova lately , every disc I've recently weighed of theirs has been heavier than what was written on it. It's not my scale, other brands measure right on the money.

Either way, 148g is pretty light. I'm surprised by the feel of the DX plastic, it seems softer/more rubbery than any other DX disc I've ever seen. I can see what you mean by the height of the disc. The Aero is a pretty big disc. I suppose I will get her something smaller too and let her decide which one she likes.

I'll have to make a trip to the local golf shop and see what discs seem like they are smaller.

discmonkey42 wrote:If you are looking for something with a lower profile, check out the Pure if you can. Comes in multiple plastics, very straight, decent glide, definitely a lower profile disc.

Thanks.

The Pure looks pretty good in all aspects but one. The lightest disc is a 170g. It does have a slim overall height and a narrow rim/wing width , which would be good for small hand. Has decent #'s too, with regard to speed glide, turn, fade.

I'll take a look into it. Pretty sure my local shop has em. I suppose I should just bring her up there and have her see what fits her hand .

The age of 9 has huge body control advantages to age 6. I mentioned 6 because 133' has been tossed by a girl at that age and only 4 years more has resulted in some 430' so the question is how many feet per year of age is possible and what the progression is. At 9 she may not yet need a mid necessarily even if she was at the top of the world in her age group. Mids are thin compared to putters and the more understable of them should be viable soon if not now. Years fly by quickly.

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

JR wrote:The age of 9 has huge body control advantages to age 6. I mentioned 6 because 133' has been tossed by a girl at that age and only 4 years more has resulted in some 430' so the question is how many feet per year of age is possible and what the progression is. At 9 she may not yet need a mid necessarily even if she was at the top of the world in her age group. Mids are thin compared to putters and the more understable of them should be viable soon if not now. Years fly by quickly.

OK.

She hasn't played much disc golf with me, so I don't think she'll be throwing very far for a while.

A mid would be fine too I suppose, as long as it is of sufficiently low speed for her to throw it properly. As I said in my opening post, I would like a disc for her that is neutral and ez to throw. The extra glide of the Aero is a bonus, but good glide would be nice.